Fed Council speaker seeks return of ‘none of the above’ voting option

According to sponsors of a bill advocating the return of the ‘none of the above’ option to ballot papers, the move would add more democracy to the political process and allow full expression of citizens’ political will.

The ‘none of the above option’ was first introduced at elections
in Russia in 2001. According to the law on elections, if the
majority of voters supported it a new election had to be called
and all candidates in the previous poll lost the right to run.
However, the option was removed from ballots in 2006 for
financial reasons – legislators decided that holding additional
elections was too heavy a burden for the state budget.

The bill on returning the option was submitted to the State Duma
on Wednesday and on the same day, the upper house speaker and
main sponsor of the bill, Valentina Matviyenko, published an
extensive article on the subject in the mass circulation daily
Izvestia. In the article Matviyenko stated that a truly
democratic system must give the citizens an opportunity to
express any political will, including the opposition to all
candidates.

She added that the Constitutional Court had earlier confirmed
that the ‘none of the above’ vote was equally as valid as the
support of particular candidates and parties, and cited
international practice, noting that such a vote was possible in
many countries, for example in Spain, Finland, Sweden, India and
Brazil.

Interestingly, Matviyenko addressed the subject in Autumn 2011,
opposing the return at that time. She claimed it would not make
polls more democratic and quoted the results of a public opinion
poll in central Russia’s Ryazan Region that showed only about 1
percent of citizens would use the ‘none of the above’ voting
option if they had such opportunity.

However, she had changed her mind by autumn 2013 and suggested
that the parliament considered the return. The move immediately
met the opposition from the Communist Party of the Russian
Federation and populist nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of
Russia, or LDPR.

They said that the move was clearly in favor of the parliamentary
majority party United Russia (Matviyenko sits on the Supreme
Council of that party), as people would cast their votes for
re-run, rather than support minority parties and candidates. LDPR
representatives also noted that frequent changes in electoral
legislation were not justified as they did not allow for
construction of a stable political system.

Left-center party Fair Russia on the contrary supported the
return, but said that it would only work if there was a
high-threshold of voter turn-out.

The head of the pro-business rightist party Civil Platform,
billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, also said he supported the return
as strong support for the ‘none of the above’ option was a clear
diagnosis both of the authorities and of the opposition.